MAKING OF - WORKING PROCESS AND USED MATERIAL 

 

MAKING OF WALDORF FIGURES

Making of Waldorf-Figures:
Sappalottas’ Waldorf Figures are completely needle felted of washed and combed Bio- sheep wool.
Partially they contain wood or wire inside to strengthen some parts. The making fundamentally comes up to the making of Waldorf-figures, as they are, for example, often used for seasoning-tables.

Waldorf-figures resign to show details like eyes in faces to let one’s imagination run wild.
I let my imagination run wild while working as well and so I make all kinds of figures and dolls that come to my mind. But the nearness to Waldorf-art can and is obviously meant to be seen.

MAKING OF THE DOLLS

Head and body of the dolls are completely needlefelted of washed and combed Bio-sheep wool as well, then they get covered with cotton-jersey and sewed.
They eyes are embroidered.
For the hair I crochet a cap of wool - then each hair gets knotted into the cap.
Some dolls’ bellies are filled with rape-seed or grape-seed to give it more weight, which gives the doll more of a human touch. Also I use a little lavender for filling sometimes.In all cases I only use natural material.
All details, like the bellybutton are sewed by hand and of course the dolls’ clothes are individually sewed by me as well.

 

So: the whole  doll is completely hand crafted. This process takes about 40 hours of time to be completed. In this time the wool seems to transform itself into it’s own appearance and personality.
It is a wonderful, creative, spiritual and reposeful kind of work.

 

The technique of making Natural fiber art dolls (Artdolls of natural fiber) mainly reminds us of the technique of making Waldorf-dolls. But Waldorf-dolls keep the facial expressions as neutral as possible to let imagination run wild. So the Waldorf dolls’ faces and bodies are not needlefelted, but just filled with sheep wool. This process takes far less time to complete and results in quite different expressions.The material used is the same in both cases.
For my creative work as a dollmaker I mainly prefer the the technique of needle felting to create certain kinds of individual faces and bodies.

So far I mainly use Alpaka-wool for the doll’s hair, as I want children to be able to play with their dolls without taking care too much all the time and Alpaka-hair is not as hard-wearing as Alpaka-wool.
Although I do have to mention, that of course fiber art dolls made of wool and cotton can not be compared with  nearly undestroyable plastic-dolls. The recommended age of playing with fiber art dolls starts at the age of 6, although of course it depends on the personalities.
Out of legal reasons I also I have to highlight, that natural fiber art dolls are not to be consumed as toys, but as Art-dolls for the use of grownup collectors only, as little parts, like buttons could be swallowed or inhaled by children which could cause serious harm on children!
So if you give your Sapplaottas dolls to children I do not take any kind of  risk and responsibility for any harm that might be caused because of it.